IoT Landscape Defies Mapping

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The landscape of the Internet of Things is more fragmented than the mind of Sybil, the poster child for multiple personality disorder.

Patrick Moorhead recently tried to provide a little therapeutic organization to the mess in a recent Forbes article. Hereís how he broke down IoT from his company-centric viewpoint as a strategy consultant:

IBM Smarter Planet has identified relevant IoT real-world issues for vertical markets and has what looks like a large marketing and consulting effort aimed at vendors in those verticals.

Ciscoís Internet Business Solutions Group is in the Internet of Everything (IoE) camp -- IoT being, apparently, insufficient.

HP M2M Solutions is focused on M2M communications and not yet focused on an integrated IS strategy.

Qualcomm is in the IoE camp and is similarly focused on end-points and M2M communications without including the larger IS picture.

Internet-of-Things Architecture (IoT-A), formed in 2009, is a European Lighthouse Integrated Project that gets good marks on completeness of vision and being forward looking.

Thatís not a bad starting point, but it misses a lot of activities humming deeper in the technical weeds like so many crickets. Here I would point to more dev kits than you can shake a stick at. To name just a few representative examples, they include:

I credit Dust Networks with being one of the pioneers of the field. The startup spun out of a Berkeley research project is now part of Linear Technology. Dust is just one high-profile example of a whole set of leaders from that era, some of which have not survived.

Another way to track this fragmented landscape is via actual deployments. But this is the most murky part of the IoT territory.

Many deployments are embedded deep into SCADA infrastructure projects that are not widely publicized and probably donít want to be, for security reasons. They range from city traffic cams to farm irrigation systems. And letís not forget the emerging market for wearable computers.

I am keen to map out this piece of the terrain because it holds the promise of best-practices and lessons learned -- quite a promising harvest.

There is a range for need. Smartphone as a door opener is a value added convenience. Early adopter applications need to have intrinsic value. This is an example where IoT is going astray. In this localized application there is no need for locks and smartphone to become IPv6 enabled. Having IPv6 enabled locks increases the potential for hacking.

If you have a smartphone, you will know that the users are asking for these devices. People want to grant access to their doors via their phones. People want to turn off their light while away, etc. The need is already here with us.

>> By naming these upcoming technologies as "Internet of Things", we are somehow excluding ourselves "the humans" from this new evolution.

Humans are part of the mix. With biochips and implantable electronics, man can be an extension of the Internet. The challenge is that this transition will not be planned or ordered. It will be here before we all know it. Drug companies making drugs with some IP-nodes etc.

Internet is one schema for networks. Connected devices existed before the Internet. Mandating "Internet" requirements for connected devices is superflous and counterproductive -- for example, IPv6 addresses.

There are many aspects to this IoT, so naturally you're going to have lots of organizations scrambling in lots of directions. I think the biggest failing in this thinking, though, is the notion the the IoT is something new. It's not. It's nothing more than continued evolution of the Internet. Gradually more and more of the same.

There's a very good book on Internet Protocols called "Internetworking with TCP/IP," by Douglas E. Comer. My edition is dated 1991. Up front, it states that the Internet essentially started in 1980, and had grown to "hundreds" of individual networks, and 20,000 computers, by 1987. By 1990, that had grown to 3000 networks and 200,000 computers.

Surely, where we stand today would have been considered "the Internet of things," with a 1991 perspective. Used to be that access to the Internet was only via remote terminals connecting to large mainframes, via some sort of telephone or other connection. Wouldn't direct IP connections to PCs, tablets, smartphones, sensors, machinery, all of which exist today, have been aptly called "Internet of Things"?

>> Efforts to assimilate embedded devices into the Internet are futile!

Why do you think so? I generally think that the business of Internet assimilation is straightforward with the IP being the key part. If the device has the IP defined, it can get it. That is different from making money in a crowded business but technically it is not hard. What is that a futile endeavor?